In Remembrance
by BookJunkie007
Summary: Jack reflects on Esther's death, and the deaths he and Torchwood have caused. Written for the Concise Science-Fiction and Fantasy Month on LiveJournal. Thanks to Karaokegal for looking it over. Spoilers for Torchwood: MD ep 10. Love comments and critique.


_Major spoilers for the last episode of Miracle Day, but it's not really about that. It's about all the brave men and women who have laid down their lives to defend the Earth._

_Jack reflects on Esther's death, and the deaths he and Torchwood have caused._

Another death, Jack thought as he sang the hymn. Another death, although he had vowed to himself that there would be no more. Not because of him. He had almost succeeded this time. Almost.

If it hadn't been for the Blessing, they all would have survived. Well, he might not have, but that was unknown at the time. He hadn't realised Rex had been transfused with his blood. That was an unexpected quirk. Mind you, unexpected quirks were standard operating procedure when you worked for Torchwood.

Jack's mind wandered back through the years, remembering some operatives and deaths better than others. Alice and Emily, who had first brought him into the fold, with Emily dying in an alien confrontation gone wrong a short time later and Alice living long enough to cyrofreeze the second him. Or was it the third him? He didn't know anymore; his memories were a jumble.

He remembered the men who were dispatched to China during the Boxer Rebellion. So few had made it home. There were the soldiers who had run over a Chosen One. He fought in both World Wars, watching his comrades in arms dying around him as he went relentlessly, continually on.

He remembered the tragedy of New Year's Eve, 1999. He remembered how he had made a vow to himself that Torchwood _would_ be ready. They'd always used him for the dirty jobs, like the children in 1965, but never asked his opinion on how things could be dealt with. They hadn't had enough faith, enough trust, in him for that. His mind wandered back to what they'd done to a young Adipose who had fallen through the Rift.

_It was the mid-1930s in Cardiff and the Great Depression was coming to its peak. Everyone was looking for work, but with Torchwood you were guaranteed a job: alien invasions never stopped. Jack had been sent out to respond to Rift activity with a fellow agent, Oscar. When they were at the location, Jack found the baby Adipose and had almost persuaded it to come back to what they were using as a Hub, that it would be safe. Oscar had other ideas, though. He took one look at the alien and fired the defabricator gun that Jack had fixed up after it was found near the docks._

_When bits of fat stopped splattering everywhere, Jack was furious._

"_Why did you do that?" he demanded._

"_It was a threat to the Empire," Oscar responded, unconcerned about the mess._

"_No, it wasn't!" Jack replied. "It was just a baby, who wanted to go home."_

"_It was an alien, so it had to be stopped," Oscar countered._

"_You had no right to end the life of a child," Jack said, voice shaking._

"_Yes, I did," Oscar replied with a sneer. "Besides, you're just freelance."_

It wasn't the first time Jack had been denounced because he wasn't a full agent, and it wouldn't be the last. At least not until the mid-80s, when he was finally acknowledged as a genuine agent of Torchwood. Even then, his superiors hadn't been willing to listen to him.

He thought about the team he built from the ground up, and the replacements he had had to find. Learning how to deal with the aliens around them became as routine as everyone learning how to shoot. The others thought nothing of it, except Ianto, who knew it hadn't been standard procedure before. Jack dropped bits of future history along the way as jokes, his team not even realising that he was making them better prepared than the previous versions of Torchwood.

"_Rift activity," Tosh sang out, going over to her computer and tapping on keys._

"_Where?" Jack asked, coming over from the lounge where the team had been sitting._

"_Here," Tosh said, giving Jack the coordinates._

"_Okay," Jack said, looking at them. "Gwen, Ianto, with me. Owen, Tosh, stay here. Any idea what it could be?" Jack addressed Tosh._

"_No, but whatever it was, it was pretty small," Tosh replied. "Barely a blip on the screen."_

"_All right," Jack said. "Let's go."_

_When they reached the address provided and got out of the SUV, Jack cautioned, "Remember, it could be dangerous, so be careful."_

_Jack, Gwen, and Ianto split up, looking around carefully. Gwen found it first._

"_Jack, Ianto, over here!" she yelled before addressing the alien she had found. "Hello, sweetheart," she cooed, crouching down. "Aren't you adorable?"_

_The alien cooed back as Jack and Ianto ran up behind her, watching as Gwen stretched out her arms to the humanoid blob of fat who was waving at her._

"_Isn't this one of the aliens you told us about?" she asked, still trying to get the creature to trust her._

"_Yeah, it is," Jack said, watching Gwen and the alien interact, a scene from another time flashing in his mind. "It's a youngAdipose, from Adipose 3. It probably wants to go home."_

"_Well, then, let's take it back to the Hub, see what Tosh can do," Ianto suggested._

_After returning to the Hub, with much cooing over the alien by Tosh (Owen merely rolled his eyes), a nursery ship was located and a message sent, asking if they would like to pick up the lost baby. A return message was received, and when the nursery ship arrived in orbit, the entire team went to see the alien off. The baby Adipose waved goodbye as it went up in the tractor beam and everyone, including Owen, waved back._

"_Well, at least we got this one right," Owen said, referring to the fact they hadn't had to kill the alien this time._

He was affectionate to all his team members, listening to what they had to say, letting them have their opinions; and would have shagged them all if they would have let him. Over time, they were pulled into being his family, so he wasn't dealing with his immortality alone. That made the losses hurt even more.

Ianto and Gwen hadn't been the same after Toshiko and Owen died. They'd been willing to follow Jack, but he could tell their hearts weren't into the job. He understood how they felt, and had let them grieve as long as they needed to. It wasn't until the Earth had been moved that they really snapped back. They remembered what they had to fight for, and they did their jobs with gusto.

He had so much blood on his hands, he thought. The only person he was close to who hadn't been killed (yet) was Gwen, and he was intent on keeping it that way. That was the whole reason for him to come back to Earth. Getting involved in the Miracle was a side mission to the real one of keeping Gwen safe. If she died, there would be nothing to tie him to Earth. There would be no one to keep his secrets. He would be free to roam the galaxies, and yet, he really didn't want to leave. He had spent too much time here, sacrificed too much, to be able to walk away so easily.

Only one thing he could do now, he supposed: rebuild Torchwood, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. He had Gwen and Rex; that was a start. Or he could let Torchwood fade into legend again and live a quiet life, watching Anwen grow up and keeping Gwen safe. Maybe she'd even die of old age, a rarity in their profession.

Either way, he knew his place was here, on Earth. It was time to find a place and make a stand, until a new set of disasters took Gwen away from him. Only then could Jack return to the stars.

He wouldn't abandon her again.


End file.
